With Hurricane
Sandy’s passing, we reset the awnings, put all the equipment back
out and reopened for business. The water only got within
three feet of the top of the seawall, and the winds never topped
force 6. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those downstate that
were less fortunate. The only impact it had on us was we were
disappointed that the expected visit by Hugh and Dave Wood
from England had to be canceled due to the hurricane. Hugh was
another Royal Navy Captain-class frigate Vet who wanted to see SLATER
with his son. Hugh was sent to New York in 1942 to join the DE HMS
GARLIES and he participated in North Atlantic Convoys and D-Day
landings, serving in the black gang. We’re hoping to see them next
year. Tour-wise it has been a very good month with youth group
overnights booked every Friday and Saturday through November 16th. We
also experienced a steady flow of Cub Scout and Brownie tours, as we
began reaping one of the benefits of being a National Historic
Landmark. Some Merit badge requirements include a visit to an NHL, so
now a visit to the SLATER can mean a step towards another merit badge
for these kids.

The weekend of
November 10th was especially busy. In addition to hosting back-to-
back overnight encampments, we hosted the Marine Corps Birthday on
Saturday, the annual USS SLATER Fort Orange Club Fundraiser Saturday
night, and our Veterans Day Ceremony on Sunday Morning. On
Saturday at noon the site was once again a sea of red jackets as the
flood of Marines descended upon SLATER. Tom DeMeo once again
organized a special event in which SLATER was the venue for the
recognition of the 237th Marine Corps Birthday Celebration. Tom’s
first thought was to remember our own RADM Paul Czesak, NYNM
who remains in long-term care at The Avenue rehabilitation center in
Schenectady. Tom then introduced the keynote speaker Lieutenant
Colonel Patrick R. Blanchard who is presently serving as the
Executive Officer, Marine Officer Instructor and Associate Professor
of Naval Science at Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. As always, the ceremony
concluded with the presentation of the Birthday Cake in which the
oldest Marine present, 92-year-old Arnold Townsend, USMC,
presented a piece of the cake to the youngest Marine present.
Following the presentation, Colonel Blanchard’s RPI Midshipmen did
the traditional three gun salute with number 3 three-inch gun under
the direction of Erik Collin.

That evening we
hosted our annual Fort Orange Club Fundraiser for the Hull Fund.
At 1730 the guests began gathering in the West Lounge of the Fort
Orange Club, which we had decked out with nautical memorabilia for
the occasion. We had some unexpected guests. DESA Ladies Auxiliary
President Phyllis Gruber and DESA Executive Administrator Dori
Glaser and her husband Ed had scheduled a site visit here
in Albany for the 2013 DESA Convention that same weekend. And, John
Cosgrove and Georgia Jones came up from Washington D.C.
Heavy h'ors d'oeuvres were the order of the evening with
an open bar and delightful company. Chairman BJ Costello
opened the event with the proud announcement of us becoming the
number one tourist attraction in Albany, according to
Tripadvisor.com, a position we have managed to hang on to into the
last week of November. The big surprise of the evening came when Dori
presented BJ with the proceeds from the DESA LA Chapter raffle which
came to $20,000. That combined with the $30,000 we expect to net from
the benefit made it a $50,000 night after all expenses are paid.
We’re now well over the $800,000 mark for the Hull Fund.

At that point we
adjourned to the Presidents Room where BJ introduced our keynote
speaker Captain James T. Loeblien, USN, a 1985 Naval Academy graduate
who currently serves as the Director of the Navy’s U.S. Senate
office. In this position, he is the face of our Navy to the
Senate on policy, education and financial issues. Captain Loeblien
gave a stirring visual presentation of the challenges and commitments
our modern Navy faces on one specific day in March of 2012. The
bottom line is that we are stretched pretty thin when we look at all
the things we expect our Navy to do, as the commitments seem to
increase and the resources diminish. It is a great credit to all our
service personnel at what they have accomplished in this era of
reduced budgets.

The second part of
the program meant the most to me personally. It was the
announcement of the Trustees' Volunteer of the Year Award. As always
this was a most difficult selection, because in an organization where
so many give so much, how do you single out one individual? But, we
have a volunteer who has been with us from day one and a volunteer
who meets our other important criteria in that he’s over eighty
years old. And, as Red Buttons used to say, “A guy who never got a
dinner.” I’m talking about Bob Dawson. At 82
years old, Bob is a “Kid” by our standards.

Bob
graduated from Albany High School in 1948 and entered the US Navy and
was assigned to the destroyer USS MASSEY DD778 where he made radarman
striker. Bob was recalled to
active duty in August 1950 and assigned to the USS WALKE DD723
in San Diego as a radarman. USS WALKE was assigned duty in Korea
and sailed in the first week of January 1951. WALKE operated
with carrier task force TF77 in support of air operations and
operated up and down the Korean coastline doing gunfire support for
ground forces shore. On June 12th at 0742 hours the WALKE suffered an
underwater explosion in one of her aft berthing compartments, killing
26 and wounding 42 of her crew. Bob was in the compartment when
the explosion occurred. Bob was wounded but remained with the ship.
The Navy insisted it was a mine, but there was considerable
speculation that it was a torpedo from a Russian or Chinese
submarine. Despite the damage, she was able to make way on one
operational propeller and return to Sasebo, Japan for repairs and
then to Mare Island Naval shipyard for overhaul. That’s a damage
control lesson applicable to today’s Navy.

The
majority of his working career was with New York Telephone as a
Senior Data Communication Consultant working with New York State
implementing data communication networks. On
the volunteer side, Bob was a member of the Shaker Road Loudonville
Fire Department and a member of the Town of Colonie Fire Protection
Committee. Bob was on the wharf when USS SLATER arrived in Albany on
October 27, 1997. He and his friend, the late George
Irwin, began with the restoration
crew. Then, Bob volunteered for tour guiding because he felt that’s
where he could make his greatest contribution to the project. He
certainly has.

Given
the podium, Bob couldn’t resist the dig at me for the lack of ink
the tour guides get in SIGNALS and he is absolutely right.
Bob presented several accounts of how emotionally affected visitors
were by SLATER, including the son of a deceased DE Sailor who said to
Bob, “Thank you for letting me spend another day with my father.”
So I put it back on you tour guides. When you have stories like
these, email them to me. They are important and need to be heard.
This ship is more than paint and machinery. We need to convey that
to the rest of the world. It must mean something when Sailors want to
come all the way from Europe to see us.

I
followed Bob to the podium.It
has somehow been my misfortune throughout my career that every
opportunity that I’ve been presented with an open bar, I’ve also
had to give a public speech. The need to remain coherent has prevented
me from taking full advantage of these opportunities. But only the
audience can judge if remaining sober helped me remain coherent. My
topic was “The Bottom Line: The Why, What, and How of Drydocking.”
This was a graphic presentation showing the need for drydocking and
what we anticipate happening in the shipyard, using images from other
ships that have been through the same process, from the perspective
of someone who has never been through the process. Using the numbers
from six other similar-sized historic ships, the only conclusion I
could draw is that the numbers are all over the place and you really
don’t know what you’ve got until you’re up on the blocks and
they are finished punching holes in your bottom after they have sand
blasted. Like “This Old House” it promises to be an adventure. It
won’t be forgotten that after the program Susan Biggs remarked that
in all the years she and Sherry had been coming to the event, she
thought this was the best program we’d ever put together.

We were up early on
Sunday morning for our annual Veterans Day Commemoration aboard the
ship.Steve Long was on hand to emcee the event in rather
inclement weather. However, we had a good showing of dignitaries
including Senator Neil Breslin, Assemblymen Jack McEneny
and Bob Reilly, and Albany County Executive Dan McCoy. We
had good media coverage including a team from C-Span. Special kudos
go to our RPI NROTC gunners, the scouts and leaders of Boy Scout
Troop 29 from Congers, New York, bugler Steve Stella and
our own USS SLATER Color Guard who stood by when it started to rain.

We may get some
national publicity. The national cable television network C-Span
spent a week profiling the city of Albany as part of their “Cities
Tour.” Reporter Adrienne Hoar covered our Veterans Day
Ceremony and got great footage of the gun salute. In addition, they
came back the following Thursday and filmed the full tour of the
ship. Also, they interviewed author Bob Cross about his
history of Destroyer Escorts Shepherds of the Sea as part of
their Booknotes series. We’re happy to announce that Bob’s book
is being reprinted in soft cover and will once again be available
from the US Naval Institute in March of 2013. We don’t know how
much air time SLATER will get, but the program will air on one of the
C-Span channels December 8th and 9th. Now that
we’re closed for the season, the final numbers are in and our 2012
attendance us up 5% over 2011.

So, by my count I’ve
almost gone three pages without mentioning maintenance. Don’t
worry; the other half of the crew hasn’t stopped working. Doug
Tanner rounded up his crew of Tim Benner and Super Dave
Mardon to begin making the all-important and necessary
preparations for winter. Following our last overnight on November
16th they set about draining down the fresh water system,
blowing it out with compressed air, flushing out the septic system,
draining all that down and making sure all the traps and holding
tanks had antifreeze in them. In a practically all-hands evolution
Doug supervised rigging the large fenders on chain falls and hoisting
them up so they won’t be damaged by the anticipated ice this winter
as we prepare for the move. We were helped by our NPTU Sailors
Eric Starbuck, Lakin Quillen, Matt Rodriguez and Charlie
Hancock whose presence made it a lot easier on us old guys. By
the way, these four have continued doing the dirty work in the bilges
of B-4 through the month of November. Sadly, I think their time here
is about to end as the real Navy is about to put them back to work
learning something more useful, like how to run a reactor. We hope
that their exposure to the old Navy hasn’t warped their perspective
forever.

Doug also continues
to amaze us with his ability to get old friends to do big favors for
us. This month he went back to his old friend John Flach and
Hank Digeser at Flach Crane and Rigging with a box of
donuts. In return they sent a rig down to lift the gangways in
preparation for the move. We then rigged a temporary aluminum gangway
light enough for us to manhandle. That will provide access to the
ship until we leave Albany. Now we’re standing by waiting for some
survey work to be done on the Rensselaer wharf before we head across
the river.

Larry Williams and
Ken Kaskoun have been working on replacing Greek light fixtures in
the electronics shop below the messdecks and the forward pump room.
Clark Farnsworth,Gene Jackey and Chris Fedden have
been working on a wasted hatch that provides access to the void space
under gun three. We did the final touch-up painting on the flying
bridge, so it looks great just as we are closing for the season. The
engineers winterized the whaleboat engine.

It has been down in
B-3 that we have reached a real milestone. After months of work,
the engineers, Gus Negus, Karl Herchenroder, Ken Myrick, Gary
Lubrano and Mike Dingmon, coupled with electricians George
Gollas, Barry Witte and Gary Sheedy, have managed to
generate power with the number three ships service generator. This
200KW GM 8-268A engine is now cooled using the day tank under the
engine as a reservoir and heat exchanger by its contact with the skin
of the ship. On Saturday November 24th all these forces
got together to generate power. It was the first time in my life I’d
seen a synchroscope in actual operation. Our friend and searchlight
expert Will Hevey of Show Lighting in Berlin, Connecticut made
his second visit in a month to try to get the starboard 24-inch
searchlight operational. To this end they were successful for a short
period of time, though problems showed up in the rectifier box in B-3
that are probably just dirty contacts. But, the fact is that the
engine ran for about three hours and generated power flawlessly. As
the pessimist said, counting the whaleboat, SLATER has ninety
cylinders. It’s taken us 15 years to get 15 working.

The success we
witnessed was the result of a very long restoration process that
included a large number of people, including George Gollas and Brian
Goodman. The confidence we had was the direct result of our
collective efforts. It would not have been possible without
Brian’s help four years ago on the first LSM trip, nor without
George’s technical research once the tech manual became available.
Others who made significant contribution were Gary Sheedy and
Barry Witte, who were among the first volunteers to report
aboard in 1997. Chris Hanley and his Colonie High Auto class
students who assisted with the cosmetic restoration of nearly all the
panels, James Conlon, who is always willing to lend a hand
whenever he is home from VMI, and of course Gus and the engine crew,
without whom there would be no restored prime mover to push on all
those electrons. The day’s events were well documented by
Thomas Scian on a Youtube video that can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1anYB4cLl3I

It seems not a month
goes by that I don’t have some sad news to report. This month I
have more than usual. Bill Haggart lost his wife Dorothy
after a prolonged battle with cancer this month. He extends his
thanks to all the SLATER crew who attended the wake. Bill seems to be
in good spirits and is back aboard ready to haul up the accommodation
ladder and rig fenders for the move. And, for all you old-timers who
go back several years, we had a call from Master Chief Dave
Floyd’s wife that he has been diagnosed with terminal lung
cancer and is presently in Hospice care at his home in Virginia.
Our dedicated archivist/librarian Franklin Peter has been
diagnosed with colon cancer and is preparing to undergoing treatment. We
wish him a full and rapid recovery.
Paul Czesak remains in stable condition in the long-term care wing at
The Avenue rehabilitation facility in Schenectady. And, Tommy
Moore is doing well following his fall off a roof last summer.
Surgery on his fractured spine left him two inches shorter, and the
most difficult part of his recovery has been the compound fracture of
his forearm of which he still has very limited use. But, he’s been
back to the ship and called twice to remind me not to forget to call
him for the move.

And finally, be
warned. Now that we’re closed for the season and have no ticket
revenue, I’m looking for another source of revenue, so next month
will be Winter Fund solicitation time again. All of you who we
have snail mail addresses on will be asked to kick in $100 bucks to
get us through the winter. I would have asked this month, but I
wanted to put some more time between the raffle, the Hull Fundraiser
and now the Winter Fund. As the tour guides explain to the visitors
when they lead tours past the ship’s office, “Our Captain spends
most of his time doing something a real Captain never had to do,
begging for money.” I’m amazed at how many of you know what’s
coming and have sent in your 2012-13 Winter Fund donations already.
You’re very well-trained. And don’t worry; I’ll be donating,
too. I think I’ve sold my soul for a ship.